


i'll keep walking (toward the sound of your voice)

by enonymous



Category: Dream Team RPF, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avatar Dream, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, Romance, Tagging stuff is hard, Waterbender George
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27330541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enonymous/pseuds/enonymous
Summary: Dream is so, so sure that it's a good idea- but all things come with a price. It's not a price he's willing to pay.from @goshikle's avatar!dream au.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 426





	i'll keep walking (toward the sound of your voice)

**Author's Note:**

> for gosh's au- check her out on tumblr @goshikle! this fic might not make sense without context, ehe
> 
> normal disclaimer - respect dream n george, don't shove it in their faces, etc. enjoy!

You're so sure that it's a good idea.

You're so sure that it's a good idea because you're cocky, yes, but you trust the airbenders and you know the worst that could happen is you get a little banged up and embarrassed- whatever. You can take the blow to your pride, you can take a hit. Whatever they throw at you, you know it can't be worse than what you've been through so far. You can laugh it off. The monks know to not push your limits, and you have George and Sap to back you up. 

And besides, you're tired of sitting here in the temple, day after day, practicing airbending, trying to master the movement and memorize the way it feels thrumming through your body while danger looms on the horizon, bright as a flare. Running the same few lessons, sparring the same few people. You're on a time limit and everyone knows, can feel it when the sun spills red and orange into every evening, holding their breaths. You won't run out of time again. You can't. 

You're so sure that it's a good idea, and Sap thinks so, too. George doesn't. George, actually, doesn't like the idea of you being forced into the avatar state in the slightest- nervously, he paces the room long past dark, and you watch him from your bed, amused and worried and waiting for ships to breach the clouds in the night sky. The watery moonlight illuminates his face as he sits down on his bed, twisting his fingers together before standing again, wandering over to where Sap is sleeping like a log. You've never seen him look so scared, and all he's going to be doing is watching you from the sidelines like he always does, absentmindedly bending water in and out of a flask. Finally, you speak.

"Hey," you call gently, and he blinks owlishly at you, as if he's completely forgotten you were there, lost in his own world. You wonder what he thinks about- if he thinks of you as much as you think of him. "C'mere."

You're almost surprised when he _does_ walk over, gingerly sitting at the edge of your bed. He's normally so stubborn, always ready to put up a fight about anything, that you were half expecting him to go to sleep out of spite; instead, he silently stares up at you, worry lurking at the corners of his mouth. For a moment, your breath leaves you. His eyes are black in the darkness, the reflection of the moon disappearing when he blinks. 

"What're you so anxious about?" you ask him. It comes out less teasingly than you were aiming for, but you hate seeing him scared- you'd rather he be smiling or goofing off or somewhere not here, where everything could come crumbling down any minute now. "You don't even know what they're going to do to me yet, what's with that face?"

Instead of indignantly scowling or rolling his eyes like you were hoping he would, his lower lip trembles, and he blinks rapidly. You don't know what you'd do if he cried- enter the avatar state, probably- so you lurch forward and grip his hand, startling him so badly that he almost topples right off the bed. 

"George," you say as somberly as possible, as he tries and fails to voice his surprise and concern, "listen."

Finally, he manages, "I'm listening?"

"If," you say, and since you're a shithead, you pause just to feel his hand squeeze yours tighter, "if they make me meditate for more than half an hour, you have to start choking Sap with his own saliva. Please. They'll all go running to help, I don't want to meditate-"

"Oh my god," George says a little too loudly for someone whose friend is asleep a mere few feet away, which is always a good sign. He snatches his hand back, offended, and pins you with a glare that's more of a pout. It's terribly, painfully cute. "I hope you get to do nothing but meditate tomorrow, you're so annoying."

You throw your head back and laugh, unable to stop your smile when George's little giggles become audible over your own wheezing. "I'll die for real," you manage between bouts of laughter, "Georgie, I'll die, you wouldn't want that, right?"

"I hope the next Avatar is less annoying than you," he says mercilessly, and you throw an arm over your face, desperately trying to quiet your laughter.

"I'll take meditating from dawn to dusk over this bullying," you lament, because George is smiling and it looks about infinitely better than the resigned worry he'd been wearing before. George snorts, giggling helplessly, breaking into louder peals of laughter when he accidentally meets your eye. You can't make yourself look away as he tries and fails to calm down, gasping for air. You want to take his hand again. 

"You'll regret saying that when you end up hobbling around with pins and needles all of tomorrow evening," he snarks when he finally catches his breath, but you watch the same quiet sadness creep back into the way his smile stops stretching to his eyes. You were off the mark somehow, you realize. There's something else he's worried about, and his hand is right there, and you hate seeing him scared. You open your mouth-

He beats you to it with a yawn, hand moving to cover his face. You try not to be disappointed when he blinks sleepily (you fail), and instead of doing something stupid, you nudge him gently.

"Get some sleep, Georgie," you say, smiling as softly as you can at him. He looks at you again- and something in the way his eyes search your face before he nods and makes his way back to his bed makes you wish you'd done something stupid, like ask him what he was really scared about or ask him if he cares about you.

You're afraid of what either answer might be.

* * *

You were so sure that it was a good idea because you thought, at worst, you would be meditating. You were wrong.

You're meditating in your dead past life's clothes.

Sap had been called away before you'd even started, so there's no one to help you laugh off this ridiculous situation- George alternates between sitting, pacing, and absentmindedly bending the water out of your cup, at the edge of the training area perched on a sheer cliff face that you've spent far too long on. And he keeps giving you these looks, half-squinting in the sun, and you sort of feel like you're kicking a puppy or something equally evil, and then he'll look away and you can go back to pretending you're concentrating on saving the world instead of staring at his face.

It only takes a half hour of this for you to get bored of it, so you blink your eyes fully open and shed the previous Avatar’s clothes before making a beeline for George. He's waterbending the life out of the grass he's sitting in, which he'll probably feel bad about later. He doesn't notice you until you drop down next to him in the withering patch of ground around him, steadily expanding, at which point he yelps and drops the fist-sized ball of water he'd been messing around with.

"Why are you so worried about me being forced into the avatar state?" you ask him bluntly. He's not looking at you now, avoiding your eyes as he focuses on regathering his water, curled up with his knees to his chest. "It's not like we're doing anything dangerous, all I've done today is play dress up and get tickled that one time-"

"I don't like it when you're in the avatar state," George cuts you off, shoulders drawn up nearly to his ears. You reel back with the force behind his words. The grass yellows a little faster as his ball of water spins, gaining size as he grows more agitated. His fists bunch up the fabric at his knees and the words spill as if they've been cut out of him. "It's scary, okay? I don't- I hate seeing you like that." The water twists, scattering sunlight across his face. "It's like you disappear. Like you can't hear me. I-" George bites off his words, turning away; tentatively, you touch his arm and watch the line of his jaw when he swallows, breath shaky. You don't know what you'd do if he cried. 

Finally, you clear your throat. "Okay," you tell him quietly, and then with more confidence, "Okay. We'll call it a day for now, alright?"

He nods. You stand, hesitantly, and look down at him; small, sitting in the pool of shadow you cast with the sun at your back. 

"We'll be alright," you reassure him again. He doesn't say anything, but you know it in the way his shoulders relax, posture unfurling. He trusts you, even though you're still sure that it was a good idea.

You make your way back to the head monk, Wilbur, who has begun airbending exercises with some of the others on the field. At the sound of your footsteps, he turns with a smile- the same smile people usually wear when they know you're the Avatar. When they're hoping that you'll save them. 

You're starting to hate that smile. It's not fair that you're constantly on the run, it's not fair that you have to fight, it's not fair that you're endangering the lives of everyone you meet-

It's not fair to tell Wilbur and the monks that you're going to spend the rest of the day practicing airbending, not when you've painted a giant target mark on the temple by seeking them out, but you hate seeing George scared. 

"Besides, it's only ever happened defensively," you tell him, because you feel like you need to offer him some sort of explanation that isn't _I care too deeply for George, please understand_. Wilbur gives you a look, one that makes the hair stand up at the back of your neck, turns and halts the half-dozen airbenders still moving through their exercises.

"You ought to have told us this earlier," he says, entire body shifting into a stance that's familiar to you now, having practiced it nearly constantly for the past few days. Behind him, the six other benders dip into their own offensive stances, eyes sharp, ready to snap. Laughing nervously, you take a step backwards, towards George, and then another. The nomads advance steadily.

You barely have time to shout George's name before they all converge on you at once. When you were young, a hurricane had swept through your hometown; you'd watched it rip trees from the ground and topple houses, devastate families in just minutes. The looks on their faces strikes the same fear in your heart as the winds upending your neighbours' home had, so long ago.

You fall back on your earthbending, but you can barely hear your own thoughts over the roar of wind and your panic. George appears at your side, and your heart clenches- once again, he's in danger because of you. The determined set of his jaw doesn't hide how laboured with terror his breathing is.

"Stop!" You manage to cry out in between trying to keep track of your assailants and George and how much you hate seeing him in danger, how much you hate seeing him scared. Wilbur’s eyes are flinty. "Please stop, we can try again tomorrow-"

"We may not have tomorrow," he counters harshly, and a gust of wind almost sends you toppling. You straighten against it, bringing up a stone slab in front of another nomad, desperately trying not to hurt them.

"It won't work," you tell him pleadingly, "I don't want to hurt you-"

"If you won't fight to save yourself," the man cuts you off coldly, "then perhaps you'll fight to save _him_." Wilbur doesn’t even say his name. You already know who.

And your blood runs cold, and you drop your stone walls, and you turn, shouting desperately, but George is already choking on your name with his hand outstretched like he was reaching for you before Wilbur had even spoken. One of them- you don't know which one, you can't tell, _you can't tell-_ is holding him up, feet kicking weakly as he tries to breathe around the air in his throat. 

"Don't," the word is ripped out of you, hoarse and panicked and desperate and scared as he meets your eyes with something like resignation, " _DON'T_ -"

"Dream," George sobs, gasping, and then he's moving almost too fast for your eyes to see. It's like you're rooted to the spot. You're standing, unmoving, as George gets pitched off the side of a mountain, screaming for you, eyes full of terror, and you were so sure that this was a good idea, and you've never seen him look so scared, and he was crying your name, he was crying, and you were _so sure-_

His scream echoes when it's cut off. A sound wrenches itself from your chest, your heart, somewhere lightless inside you that's older than you even know, a sound like shattering. You feel numb when you remember that you'd told him _we'll be alright_. You feel numb when you remember that he'd trusted you. You feel numb when you remember that you'd never asked what you wanted to. And you don't remember much after that.

* * *

Your grief is so ravenous you become it. You can't think of anything beyond the way your heart aches like it's begging, and you can feel power running through your veins but you don't feel powerful. You just feel empty. You can hear the sound of panicked shouting, of earth grinding like it's tearing itself apart, but it seems so far away, you just feel alone. It's tearing you apart.

And over the distant din someone's calling your name. You know his voice, would know it in your sleep, know it in this half-waking world you're in, know it distorted like it's coming through water. He's calling your name. You know his voice. And you can make out the words, now, fragments of sentences, almost nonsensical- he's begging you to come back, to stop, to listen-

You're listening. Your mouth tries to form the words, some reassurance that you yourself don't quite believe, and suddenly you're blinking, staring out into the wreckage of the training field, sunlight catching on the dust from the rubble, and you're falling- just a few feet from where you'd been floating in the air. And George is there, tear tracks down the dust on his face, collapsed on the ground next to you with his hand still clenched around the fabric of your pants. He was reaching for you. You only manage to take a single breath before he's tackling you to the ground with a sob that might be your name through his tears.

"George," you gasp, and then you're wrapping yourself around him equally fiercely, burying your nose in his hair and desperately hoping that you aren't dreaming. You can feel him breathing. _You can feel him breathing_. He's a warm, solid, crying weight in your arms, sniffling against your shoulder, dampening your shirt, and you can hear him whispering your name like a prayer. 

"I'm sorry," you choke out, "I'm sorry, I'm _sorry,_ you're alive, I'm here now, _you're alive-_ "

"Don't," he says around his tears, and you fall silent as he pulls back to ball his fists in the front of your shirt. His gaze is desperate, frantic, avoiding yours, and his voice trembles when he speaks. "Don't go where I can't follow, Dream, don't-" 

He swipes at his own eyes furiously, and he's speaking mostly to his hands, wrinkling your collar. "I can't reach you when you're like that," he murmurs, still not meeting your eyes, still not looking at you, "You go somewhere so far away, I hate it, I _hate it_ -"

You touch his face, cutting him off gently. You know you're doing something stupid. But he's looking at you like he was lost and you found him, or you were lost and he found you, or you found each other, and you promise yourself that you'll protect him. You'll never leave him alone like this again. It's a promise you've already made to yourself. It's a promise you'll keep, now. You're touching his face and he's looking at you and you set your forehead against his, heart beating out of your chest, full of light. He's answered the questions you hadn't even asked.

"I know you do," you say. "You reached me, George. I heard you." _I'll always come back to you, for you,_ is what you mean to say, but the words stick in your throat. Saying them would mean something too much for you. He leans into your touch, and you realize- he knows what you mean. You know what he means, too. 

And Sap will burst onto the field a few minutes from now and demand to know what happened, and then he'll punch Wilbur the way you want to, and the three of you will leave this temple before nightfall- you won't learn another thing from these airbenders who have lost their way. George will fall asleep leaning on you, still shaky from his plummet down the mountain, and you'll watch his face in the moonlight and Sap will watch the both of you with a knowing look, and you'll worry to yourself about fire and destinies and airbending and the avatar state. But George will move closer to you, and you'll let yourself close your eyes even though you watch George's open hand slip out of your reach in your dreams, disappearing into a void of clouds. That will all come later.

For now, you hold George, both of you still shaking, still breathing, still alive. And that's enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> title from a poem in _crush_ by richard siken- _leave the lights on. keep talking, i'll keep walking toward the sound of your voice._
> 
> i speedran this entire fic cause gosh kept giving me ideas, hehe <3 go check her avatar au art out on tumblr @goshikle! go go go!
> 
> find me on tumblr @enonymous and on twitter @enon_ymous! leave me a comment if u enjoyed? it'd make my day :)


End file.
